Detroit Jazz Festival

Editor's Review

The four-day Detroit Jazz Festival, featuring between 80 and 100 performances, is one of the best ways for jazz lovers to celebrate the end of summer.

Detroit loves a good party, and this one has helped send off summer for the last 32 years. Stages are set up on Hart Plaza, the public square on the Detroit River highlighted by a donutlike stainless-steel fountain, and three blocks north of the plaza at the city's newest public funspace, Campus Martius. The sites are only a 15-minute walk from each other via Woodward Avenue, which becomes a pedestrian mall for the event, filled with vendors selling a mix of food and T-shirts. Music begins on Friday at around 6 p.m., and then starts shortly before noon each day thereafter. Artists play continuously until shortly before 11 p.m., with each performance running 60 to 90 minutes. Whether it's smooth jazz, progressive, freeform, gospel or other genres, performed by university bands or national recording artists, the Detroit Jazz Festival's lineup of artists is indeed world-class.